WHAT DID MOSCOW SAY?
“Our position is clear and transparent: We have always been categorically against and are now against the deployment of nuclear weapons in space,” Putin told Sergei Shoigu, his defence minister at a televised meeting in the Kremlin.
“We urge not only compliance with all agreements that exist in this area, but also offered to strengthen this joint work many times,” Putin said.
He added that Russia’s activities in space did not differ from those of other countries, including the United States.
Commenting on the weapons in space allegations, Shoigu said there were no plans of the kind outlined by the unidentified sources in the United States.
“Firstly, there are no such projects – nuclear weapons in space. Secondly, the United States knows that this does not exist,” Shoigu told Putin.
He accused the White House of trying to scare US lawmakers into allocating more funds for Ukraine as part of Washington’s plan to inflict what he said was a strategic defeat on Russia.
He said the second reason for the leaked information about the alleged Russian weapon was to encourage Russia to engage in a dialogue about strategic stability.
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to the most serious confrontation between Moscow and the West since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, and the post-Cold War arms control architecture has crumbled.
Putin said Russia had never been against discussions about strategic stability.
WHAT WOULD NUKES IN SPACE MEAN?
The exact nature of the alleged weapon is unclear. Both Russia and the United States have vast nuclear arsenals and advanced space programmes.
Threatening satellites could cause all sorts of mischief – undermining communications, surveillance, intelligence and command and control around the world, including in the nuclear sphere.
But it is unclear why Russia would need to use nuclear weapons to destroy a satellite, when conventional weapons could do the job, or whether the United States has been developing nuclear capabilities in space.
If Russia did develop such a weapon, then the United States would be forced to do something similar and perhaps China too – and so there would be a risk of some sort of nuclear space race.
Russia and the United States together hold about 90 per cent of the world’s nuclear weapons, and both have advanced military satellites orbiting the Earth.
In the early years of the Cold War, after Russia leaped ahead in the space race and both sides developed intercontinental ballistic missiles, the West proposed a treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons in space. The eventual result was the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.
The United States casts Russia and China as its biggest nation-state competitors and says both are developing a range of new weapons systems, including nuclear, cyber and space capabilities.
Russia says the post-Cold War dominance of the United States is crumbling and that Washington has for years sown chaos across the planet while ignoring the interests of other powers. Moscow says the United States too is developing a host of new weapons.
